March Laws

March Laws, also called April Laws, measures enacted by the Hungarian Diet at Pozsony (modern Bratislava) during the Revolution of 1848 that created a modern national Magyar state. After revolutions had broken out in Paris (Feb. 24, 1848) and in Vienna (March 13), liberal Hungarians, who dominated the lower house of the Diet, sought to avoid radical social revolution by emphasizing reform and national liberation.

On March 15 the liberals’ leader Lajos Kossuth presented their program to the Diet; it was intended to preserve the gentry’s power and to create an independent Magyar state united with the Austrian Empire only in the person of the emperor-king. This program, known subsequently as the March Laws, was adopted by both the upper and the lower houses.

The Laws provided for a viceroy in Budapest to exercise the prerogatives of the emperor without answering to Vienna. They also stated that Hungary was to control its own national guard, budget, and foreign policy and that it was to have its own ministry responsible to the Hungarian parliament at Budapest; the parliament was to replace the feudal Diet at Pozsony, and suffrage was to be based on a property qualification. All the “lands of the crown of St. Stephen” were to be part of the Magyar state (including Transylvania and Croatia), but representatives to the parliament were required to speak the Hungarian language. The nobility’s exemption from taxation was abolished, and feudalism was ended by abolishing the robot (the labour owed by the peasants to their landlords); the state was to compensate the landowners.

On April 11, 1848, the March Laws were constitutionally confirmed by Emperor Ferdinand I (reigned 1835–48), and the Hungarian Revolution was legalized. Although Austria denied the validity of the laws after the revolution was defeated (1849), Hungary continued to insist on their legality. Under the 1867 Ausgleich (Compromise), Hungary received full internal autonomy.